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Sunday, November 28, 2010

Haircuts for all as vexed Germany takes a firm grip on the clippers - Telegraph

Such concerns were particularly acute among investors in the UK and Germany – exposed to €110bn and €102bn of Irish bank debt respectively. The third-most exposed country, incidentally, is the United States.

The centre of the turbulence on Europe's financial markets shifted last week, though, to Spain and Portugal, causing their governments' borrowing costs to soar. The reason is that the rescue package being finalised between Dublin, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund may impose "haircuts" on all those who leant money to banks in the Republic – not just the "junior creditors".

That would all but guarantee the same principle being applied elsewhere – a prospect that sent banking stocks spiralling downward across the eurozone's "periphery", as well as the UK, piling even more financial pressure on the governments so desperately standing behind them. The yield on 10-year Portuguese debt soared to 7pc, as unions staged the country's biggest strike in 20 years, while Spanish yields spiked above 5pc.